But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!

I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.

Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.

There was a day when I liked writing letters -- it has gone. Unfortunately the passion for getting them remains.

Conversation, fastidious goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.